Monday, January 30, 2006

Short Post before Work

Today's my last day at Ritto Jr. High for the next few months. I'm heading over to school #2, Hayama- good kids, but Ritto is three steps off my back porch, and Hayama's half an hour out in the country (by bicycle, 'course). The kids at Hayama are great, but I'm not sure if they can match this:

Yesterday, in one of my 3rd-grade (9th, in America) classes, the girl who asked me to sing Amazing Grace way back when I got here came to me with an interesting question. It was in the middle of an exercise, and one of the worksheets had a picture of a ninja scaling a building (today's subject: Prepositions! The Ninja is on the wall!). She pointed to the picture, and asked, politely, "Andrew-sensei, how do you say Ninja in English?" As you all know, the English for Ninja is Ninja. I tell her so.

She was waiting for this, I can tell. The giant smile of a kid who's won one against the teaching staff erupts on her face.

"So the CIA and FBI... ninja?"

3 comments:

Em said...

Awesome.

Anonymous said...

Did you also mention that ninja is one of those few words in English that can be both singular and plural, depending on the context?

Ninja is an interesting way of describing the CIA and FBI, although my opinion is that it is more appropriate for the former. I would equate the FBI more with the Shogunate of days past.

Anonymous said...

lol, i like that ninja fbi/cia comment, THAT was really cute. nice posts by the way, love reading them, goodluck with school no. 2!

-jozi